“Well, you don’t suppose I’m going any further with it, do you?” demanded Mr. Tridge. “No fear!”
“Oh, but you can’t back out now, Joe!” argued Mr. Dobb. “It ’ud look so silly and cowardly if you backed out now.”
“I don’t care ’ow it looks if I back out! I know ’ow it will feel if I don’t back out, anyway! I can’t think what possessed you to play such a silly trick on me! Getting me to agree to stand up to a professional boxer under false pretences! Why, I’ve half a mind—”
Mr. Dobb, beseeching Mr. Tridge to maintain calm, now promised to impart the exact truth of the matter, prefacing his statement with a catalogue of grisly things which he said he hoped would happen to him if he diverged from complete veracity by as much as a hair-breadth.
He admitted that Mr. Burch, otherwise Mr. Jevvings, was a pugilist of some prominence with a deserved fame for neat and businesslike finishes to his bouts. It was, it transpired, the aim and ideal of Mr. Burch to put a similarly neat and businesslike finish to his forthcoming encounter with Mr. William Traske, of Birmingham. And, indeed, there was not the slightest doubt of Mr. Burch’s ability to do so. Unfortunately, there were others who held the same confidence as to the result, and this materially affected the betting on the issue of the match. In short, so overwhelmingly was Mr. Burch the favourite that it had become a matter of extreme difficulty to find anyone willing to bet against him, no matter how tempting the odds.
In these circumstances, it was thought expedient that something should transpire to lessen the popularity of Mr. Burch in betting circles. The landlord of the “Rose and Crown,” a party vested with considerable financial interests in Mr. Burch, had talked the matter over with other supporters, and together they had agreed on a plan. Further, the landlord of the “Rose and Crown,” being a close friend of Mr. Dobb’s and conversant with his abilities for organization, had called him in counsel and enlisted his services in the matter.
Briefly the scheme was this. Mr. Burch was to become involved in a quarrel with a local nobody, and to agree to settle the difference with boxing-gloves. Mr. Burch was to perform but indifferently at this match, failing to make the most of opportunities, and not getting in the knock-out blow till the twentieth round. There were spies in the Burch camp, and this strange remissness of his would indubitably be reported leading to a resurgence of confidence among the supporters of Mr. Traske, and so creating a profitable reaction on the betting market.
“But they’ll twig it’s a put-up job,” contended Mr. Tridge.
“No, they won’t, not them! You see, the affair’s supposed to be kept very quiet. Of course, it’s really a matter of hadvertisement, to hadvertise that Burch ’as gone dead off form; but seeing that it’s a personal matter ’e’s fighting about, they’ll never dream ’e ain’t in earnest.”
Here, then, concluded Mr. Dobb, was the real office that Mr. Tridge was required to fill, and the only difference in it to that which he had aforetime imagined it to be was that he was expected to stand up to a professional boxer of proved ability, instead of a mere amateur of indifferent skill.